up some day on the London pavement--with chalks. That sketch, by the
way, was one that had always attracted me to his studio--though he never
would part with it. I rather fancy, don't you know, that the girl had
something to do with it. It's a wonderfully realistic sketch, don't you
see; and I shouldn't wonder if it was the girl herself who lived behind
one of those queer little windows in the roof there."
"She did live there," said Helen in a low voice.
Sir James uttered a vague laugh. Helen looked around her. The duchess
had quietly and unostentatiously passed into the library, and in full
view, though out of hearing, was examining, with her glass to her eye,
some books upon the shelves.
"I mean," said Helen, in a perfectly clear voice, "that the young girl
did NOT run away from the painter, and that he had neither the right nor
the cause to believe her faithless or attribute his misfortunes to her."
She hesitated, not from any sense of her indiscretion, but to recover
from a momentary doubt if the girl were really her own self--but only
for a moment.
"Then you knew the painter, as I did?" he said in astonishment.
"Not as YOU did," responded Helen. She drew nearer the picture, and,
pointing a slim finger to the canvas, said:--
"Do you see that small window with the mignonette?"
"Perfectly."
"That was MY room. His was opposite. He told me so when I first saw the
sketch. I am the girl you speak of, for he knew no other, and I believe
him to have been a truthful, honorable man."
"But what were you doing there? Surely you are joking?" said Sir James,
with a forced smile.
"I was a poor pupil at the Conservatoire, and lived where I could afford
to live."
"Alone?"
"Alone."
"And the man was"--
"Major Ostrander was my friend. I even think I have a better right to
call him that than you had."
Sir James coughed slightly and grasped the lapel of his coat. "Of
course; I dare say; I had no idea of this, don't you know, when I
spoke." He looked around him as if to evade a scene. "Ah! suppose we
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